Seize the Day
by dotRHEA
Summary: You'd think coming home to a house surrounded by men in black suits would be asking a little too much of the older sister of Sawada Tsunayoshi. But no, they just had to be there too. ?OC
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: i really wanted to write this for a while now. Glad that I did- I just wish I managed to dish out more words.

* * *

When Sawada Ai was born, it's an affair full of hushed proposals and shotgun weddings.

She remembers tossing and turning under her silk covers, hidden from plain sight as the empty room she's been given by that nice old man down the hall illuminates under the thundering Italian sky. She remembers the bed dipping under a gentle weight; she remembers strong arms wrapped around her, a gross stubble prickling against her check as he showers her with kisses as she cries and cries and cries. She remembers sorrowful apologies and rich comforts.

She remembers running around in a dirty pink dress, laughing and screaming as she climbs trees and plays house. She remembers how the sand would feel as it fell through her fingers, how a pair of dainty fingers would lightly dab at her cheek; she remembers being picked up and tickled until she had tears in her eyes, giggling as thin arms twirled her around in huge circles and feeling the wind kiss her scraps and bruises. She remembers watching the other kids run back to both their parents.

Ai remembers looking out the window to see clouds and sky and the wings of an air plane. She remembers meeting so many people that for a while, names had completely lost its meaning to her. She remembers faces and places and homes and rooms.

She spends her whole childhood just flying over oceans to spend time with both her parents and it isn't until she starts grade three does she realize she wouldn't have to do that if her parents were both happily married.

_(but that was just the problem- they _are_ happily married. It shows from her lips to his eyes, from her embrace to his kisses. It shows in the small presents and little to none phone calls, hidden under murmurs and the articles of clothing he leaves slung over the couch that goes untouched for months.)_

It's then that Ai realizes she isn't from a normal family.

Iemitsu tells her the truth when she's seven; a whole year after Tsuna was brought into the world and five months since her last flight from Namimori.

He tells her this only a month after a man jumps them at knife-point and another man appears behind her and her mom with a gun and a fedora.

And after two years of suspecting that someone was watching the Sawada family grow and thrive in little old Namimori.

He showers Nana with tears and briskly placed kisses as she stands in the kitchen, shaken after the encounter and happy that her husband's boss granted him leave from 'digging oil in Alaska'.

Tsuna is in the living room throwing wooden blocks at her and laughing the way only toddlers can laugh and Ai just _remembers _and _remembers _and _remembers_.

With shut lips, Ai remembers the promise she made with the man she called her father that fateful day and watched with sad listless eyes as Tsuna grew up without knowing the man she knew and called dad.

She is sixteen when she boards a ship to a far off land searching for a better education and a new life separate from her own.

And she is twenty when she comes back with the life she knew she never wanted yet foolishly yearned for.

* * *

Dragging her suitcase behind her becomes clockwork as the curbs take her this way and that. Surprising her with houses that seemed to come out of nowhere and obstructing her path to her childhood home.

Ai is restless and grumpy and is five hundred ways to done when yet another person asks if she's lost.

Because no, she is not lost.

There are just five billion houses in her way.

With nothing but the sound of Japanese birds singing and the roll of her suitcase to listen to, Ai decides that the first thing she was going to do when she found her way was punch her dad out for not picking her up at the airport.

Even if the fact still stood that he _did _send her a quick text saying that he wouldn't be able to just hours before her actual flight back home.

"You're kidding me!" A loud growl escaped her mouth as she struggled to keep from throwing all her duffel bags onto the concrete in frustration.

Her house was definitely this way, she decides and glares at the huge rectangular living space before her. There were about six hundred swear words flowing through her brain right now and she knows like she knows her own name that it was an act of god that not even one of them manages to smuggle its way out of her lips in her rage before she was able to calm herself.

It was like seeing yourself in someone else's body. There was so much confusion swirling around her that she nearly choked on the bitter taste it left on her tongue.

Ai was debating whether or not she should just man up and ask a neighbour or go all out and search for her house on someone's roof top.

_They didn't even live in a newly developing neighbourhood, where were all these houses coming from?_

She felt her hands clenching and unclenching in her pockets, felt her nails dig into skin as she tried to gather her bearings. Okay, so she was lost. No biggy. She could always just call someone right?

No, she couldn't do that.

Her returning to Namimori was meant to be a _surprise _for her family.

She just wouldn't- _couldn't_ go and call home claiming she got lost on her way back after her absence.

Ai was a big girl now- fresh on her second decade and heck, she was going to find this house even if it was the end of her!

Twenty minutes later, she finds herself in a rut as she debated if the best course of action was to just barge home through the crowd of well dressed men or jump in past the stone fence and hope that no one manages to shoot her down by that point.

Really, all Ai wanted to do was to go home and have a nice quiet family reunion with cake and hugs and the whole shebang.

She was not asking for the whole mafia to be there as well.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** AYANO WILL NEVER EVER BE FORGOTTEN_._

But sadly she's just my profile pic, but that does remind me that I should get started on the short Kagepro oneshot I've been planning to write. THANKS FOR ALL THE FAVs AND FOLLOWs AND REVIEWs GUYS I LOVE YOU ALL.

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She has half a mind to just announce her arrival like some kind of crazed blue blood when the crowd of smartly dressed men begin to dissipate and black cars with darkly tinted windows begin to wiz past her. Her luggage is still set in a small pile beside her and she wonders in the back of her mind if she can get away with the amazed tourist excuse.

Ai can feel her heart beating louder against her chest as giggles ring out in the air and frustrated screams follow not soon after in the direction of her- no, her brother and her mom's house. And just as that thought begins to set in her mind, she realizes that maybe Namimori wasn't the best place to spend her gap year in.

An angry grunt and cheery male chime are soon added to the list of voices to be weary of and as the seconds ticked by, Ai began to slowly panic.

Marching her way are a small group of what she would assume to be trained assassins and here she is, crouched around the corner like some stalker. A position that had her professor somehow found out about, would've definitely shook his head in disappointment.

And of course, its times like this that the chorus of Katy Perry's Roar decides to set itself off in her pocket.

She almost dislocates her arm yanking the suitcases up and away as the voices drop and the phone practically flies its way out of her pants and to her ear.

"What?!" She blurts out as she turns the corner and runs, ignoring all the cars she passes and the weird looks aimed her way. Tears are practically bubbling up in her eyes by the time she's finally out and looking hazy-eyed at the organized traffic and street vendors that was urban Namimori, "I'm sorry, I mean hey. Hello. Bonjour. Ciao. Who's this?"

"I take it the sun didn't shine down on this one," a cryptic voice snickers into her ear, the electric buzz distracting her momentarily before she rolled her eyes. It only took a moment for her to make the switch to Italian in a way to mock her friend's poorly butchered attempt at her native tongue.

"That's one way to say it," it's a retort that comes all too naturally to her and a language that embraces just as lovingly as Japanese does. Ai is leaning against a nearby railing, a hand clutching tightly to her luggage as her friend lets out a breathy chuckle into the phone. He doesn't comment on how she didn't even try and instead asks how her visit to her mom's house went.

"Fine," she finds herself lying through her teeth and the word itself sounds so ridiculous by itself that she laughs. "Want to know the truth?"

"Who wouldn't?"

"Horrible. I didn't even make it past the neighbor's house." This time, its her friend who lets out a loud chorus of laughter that is soon joined by static snorts. A smile makes its way onto her lips despite her past predicament and before she knew it, she was joining in on it too. Giggling and exchanging lame jokes and forgetting all about how she practically just signed her sentence by blatantly ignoring the problem at hand.

Ai had been in Namimori all of three hours and the minute she had left the airport, she knew for a fact that she'll probably never make it back into education after the year was up. Heck the minute she had stepped out of the train and smelt the fresh Namimori air, she felt like she was back at university.

If she wasn't allowed at least one minute of casual escape before her impending doom, she'll probably wound up committing homicide.

Not like she would ever kill anyone.

It was just a thought.

"Ai!" A voice cried out in the distance that she decided _definitely _did not sound like the Italian she had on call at the moment. "Ai, is that you?"

"Ai?" The spurts of giggles now long gone; she can already see the lines forming on his face and hear the familiar jingle of keys as if he was preparing to go pick her up.

"Oh my god," the words felt like they were stuck in her throat. Like a string had been pulling them along the more her head tilted up and the louder the footsteps got. "Oh my god. _Oh my god_. Listen, I'll call you back. Ok?"

"What? Don't you dare-"

But her head was already up and tears had already made their way down their cheeks. The hand holding her phone now trembling with the weight of the device as the woman before her dropped all her shopping bags. Her small delicate hands cupping her own mouth in disbelief and her eyes gushing with her own tears.

She didn't even care if anyone was watching, didn't care if a pair of beady eyes followed her every move; all she knew was that she's been away from home for four years now and university was never kind enough to allow for some time on skype.

"Mom?!" Her voice barely manages to croak before she feels a pair of arms wrap around her shoulders. A head nuzzling itself into her hair and planting small kisses on her cheeks.

"My beautiful baby girl," she whispers and hugs her tight. Ai can barely make out the small crowd Nana left behind through her tears, but she knows- judging from the curious voices and footsteps that there was _a lot _that she had to catch up on. "Ai. Oh my Ai."

"I'm home, mom." It's felt like a great big weight is lifted off of her shoulders when the words pass through her lips. Her heart feels like its slowly being put back together again as her mom began rubbing circles on her back.

"Welcome back," She whispers and its all she needs to hear before Ai cries and cries and cries in the arms of Sawada Nana- the woman so ignored in the eyes of the mafia and so loved by the ones who matter most.


End file.
